Many parents of college students are furious over the latest extension of the privacy act.  Colleges and universities make extreme financial demands on parents, yet, those parents are denied access to their child's grades.  The institutions will gladly send a bill, or two, but grades?  No way, those are personal, private.  Sorry, no access.  Parents have the right to know their child's grades, whether that child is five or twenty-five, if the parent is paying the bill.  Informed parents can offer incentive and support that the university system cannot and will not do.  In schools across the country parents are being held responsible for their child's attendance to school.  If a child is found truant, the parent can be made to serve jail time.  So how is it that at one end of the spectrum, we insist on parent responsibility and support but on the other end we refuse to allow it?  Parents have the right to know what is going on with their child's education, regardless of age.